So what’s the quintessential visual representation of fish in Japanese culture? Is it a decorative koi, swimming gracefully in a garden pond? Or is it a delectable piece of sushi sitting atop an elegant piece of tableware?

Maybe it’s both, like these koi-shaped sushi morsels that combine five staples of the popular dish into a beautiful piece of edible art.

Making a succinct sign can be tricky. You want to be economical with your words, but that can lead to the trap of be too vague. A good rule of thumb would be to assume you – the sign maker – is of average intelligence. This means a lot of people are smarter than you but just as many people are stupider than you.

That strategy might have stopped this poor koi pond manager from lowering his “Koi Food 10 Yen” to “Koi Food Free.” The rest of the sign in the following translation tells the sad tale.

Thanks to the unusually shaped red mark on its head, a koi carp has brought busloads of tourists to its home in Ishikawa prefecture, Japan, as word spreads of the “heart fish” and excited sightseers jostle for position to get a snap of it.

The fish, naturally oblivious to the reason for the attention it is suddenly receiving, now spends most of its day treading water near the bridge in Kenroku-en gardens, peering up at excited tourists’ faces, thankfully unable to hear the shrill cries of teenage girls proclaiming how “kawaii!!” it is…